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Langara Open Student Scholar Prize 2020
Honourable Mention
A Manifestation of Total Freedom: Anarchy and its Viability as an Ideology
Declan Burke
Class Submitted For: POLI 1160 – Ramjee Parajulee
Open Education Statement:
Open education, quite simply, is the future. As human society increases in complexity, and the intellectual demands on its constituents likewise rise commensurately, there is nothing more important than access to knowledge and the means of self enrichment for the thriving of both individuals and society. As such, I consider open and decentralized scholarship to be the cornerstone of the next evolution of education. It expands the resources available to the general population to take control of their own faculties and expand their potential in ways that our present system is too rigid, inaccessible, and dogmatic to accomplish. In doing so it shifts the center of intellectual activity from static and status based institutions that are segregated from society at large, and allows knowledge and ideas to be formed within social contexts, tested by their members, and refined with a practical purpose always in view. Thus I am proud and pleased to have the chance to contribute in some small way to this critical endeavor, and hope that my contribution merits inclusion. A Manifestation of Total Freedom:
Anarchism and it’s Viability as an Ideology
Declan Burke
Professor: Dr. Ramjee Parajullee
Class: POLI 1160
Date: November 8th, 2019 1
Anarchism represents a unique challenge for ideological appraisal: often considered uto-
pian and idealistic at best, and dangerous nonsense at worst, it is rarely afforded serious consid-
eration as a viable ideology. However, history has shown multiple examples of anarchistic sys-
tems put into place, and the core principles of individual exercising of political liberty, and devo-
lution of power to the level of direct communal control have found both practical applications
and increasing societal support around the world. As such, not only have the previous detractions against anarchism failed to invalidate it as a fully viable ideology, but anarchism stands unique among contemporary ideologies as a fundamental departure from the paradigm of statism that all others rest on; and thus represents a bold new course for an entirely new class of democratic po-
litical theory and philosophy to develop from.
In order to fully understand the merits of anarchism, we must abandon a fundamental er-
ror in appraising it’s history; and in doing so reveal one of it’s principle strengths. The error be-
ing that the alleged historical ‘failure’ of anarchism to maintain an effective state proves that it is
a nonviable ideology. Instead, the emergence and resilience of anarchism in some of the most
turbulent periods of history is proof rather of its profound adaptability. During the Mexican and
Russian revolutions, anarchists would play decisive roles.1 In particular, the Ukrainian Mak-
novshchina movement under Nestor Makhno would succeed in operating an autonomous anar-
cho-syndicalist state, maintaining exceptionally efficient services and communications given the
conditions in which it operated, while contending with both Red and White armies on their fron-
tier.2 Despite Makhno’s ultimate defeat in the Russian Civil War, his followers would go on to
prove a continuous thorn in the side of Soviet authorities into the mid 1920’s, organizing strikes,
1 Eric R Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York, NY: Harper &. Row Publish- ers, 1969), 22, 99. 2 ibid. 94-96. 2
radicalizing youths, and attempting to undo what they saw as a subversion of the revolution.3
Similar cases occurred throughout the Spanish civil war, with anarchist factions across the coun-
try resisting calls for a hegemonic front at the cost of their principles.4 More recently, modern
anarchism has manifested both theoretically and practically in numerous forms. From engage-
ment with formal politics and welfare state mechanisms5, to collectives emerging as local re-
sponses to war in Afghanistan and Africa,6 to intellectual challenges to the economic and politi-
cal organizations of the globalized world,7 there is no doubt that anarchists have and continue to
join enthusiastically in ideological contests regardless of outcome. Though while anarchism
demonstrates extraordinary resilience compared to conventional ideologies, it’s break from its
contemporaries rests on its complete departure from the basic structure of political thinking.
Anarchism breaks from the assumptions of what is ‘required’ for effective political or-
ganization by placing the individual at the centre of all political considerations. While other ideo-
logies treat the individual either as a participatory element in a larger impersonal machine8, or as
dangerous to the optimal functioning of human society if left unrestrained,9 anarchism contends
that any separation of power from the individual devaluates that persons contribution to the polit-
3 Savchenko, Viktor. “The Anarchist Movement in Ukraine at the Height of the New Economic Policy (1924- 1925).” East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies 4, no. 2, (2017): 174-177, 179, 184. 4 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Harmondsworth, UK: Pelican Books Ltd, 1986), 406. 5 Matthew S. Adams and Nathan J. Jun. “Political Theory and History: The Case of Anarchism.” Journal of Politi- cal Ideologies 20, no. 3 (2015): 245, 248; Benjamin J. Pauli, “A New Anarchism in Britain and the US: Towards a Richer Understanding of Post-War Anarchist Thought.” Journal of Political Ideologies 20, no. 2, (2015): 141-142, 144-145. 6 Jennifer Murtazashvili, “A Tired Cliché: Why We Should Stop Worrying About Ungoverned Spaces and Embrace Self-Governance.” Journal of International Affairs 71, no. 2, (2018): 13-14. 7 Benjamin Franks, “Anarchism and Business Ethics: The Social Responsibility of the Anarchist is to Destroy Busi- ness.” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 14, no. 4, (2014): 714-716, 720-721. 8 Lucien Van der Walt, “Back to the Future: Revival, Relevance and Route of an Anarchist/ Syndicalist Approach for Twenty-first Century Left, Labour, and National Liberation Movements.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 34, no.3, (2016): 353-354. 9 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, the State, and Utopia (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc, 1974), 33-35. 3
ical landscape. As such, all political structures that do exist must enable the individual to exer-
cise power equivalent to other members of society. As demonstrated in modern conflict zones,
the most resilient form of organization remains the localized communities of individuals.10 Both
historically and ideologically, anarchist societies have stressed the necessity of democratic par-
ticipation and egalitarian mechanisms of control of any representative for the collective, by the
collective.11 This has led to criticism that anarchism invests too much power in the individual, and that either the society will simply be dissolved by competing individuals12, or else collec-
tively replace it with another, more stable framework.13 However, anarchists argue that this is
impossible precisely because the break from the traditional paradigm required by anarchism is a
total one.14 This relocation of the locus of power from an abstract institution to the individuals
that compose society, does not however change the communal context of the individual. In fact, by recognition of the individuality of those we share society with, we become aware of our fun- damental responsibility towards the maintenance of society for the benefit of all its members.15
Peter Kropotkin similarly regarded anarchism as the rejection of community by dictation, and
that the recognition of human capacity for adaptive socialization was the key to the reorientation
of society through individuals recognizing their interests in each others wellbeing.16 Instead of
fearing or seeking to exploit the capacities of individuals, anarchism fully embraces the capacity
of self determination of the individual as the strongest foundation for social organization. This
10 Murtazashvili. 21-23. 11 Angela Wigger and Hubert Buch-Hansen, “Competition, the Global Crisis, and Alternatives to Neoliberal Capi- talism: A Critical Engagement with Anarchism.” New Political Science 35, no. 4, (2013): 624. 12 Nozick. 51-52. 13 Van der Walt. 357. 14 The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection. (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2009), 16-17, 23. 15 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism & Humanism. (York, UK: Methuen, 2013), 32-34. 16 Peter Kropotkin, Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, ed. Roger N. Baldwin (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1970), 206, 209, 217-218. 4
further emphasizes the paradigmatic nature of the division between anarchism and other contem-
porary ideologies: where representative and authoritarian societies are designed with an inherent
mistrust of their constituent members, anarchists allow society to freely reflect their constituents
for better and worse.
This principle of people as both the basic means and ends of society is critical to under-
standing and appreciating the anarchist approach to organization. It is also important to under-
stand that organization, or ‘community’, takes the place of the ‘state’ used in other ideologies.
Saul Alinksy, emphasizes that means and ends are only useful when directed towards an immedi-
ate concern and action, and that a favoured tactic of subtle statist repression is the invoking of
universal morality to invalidate ‘unsavoury’ means of addressing real abuses of power.17 Modern
anarchists echo this sentiment, calling for radical breaks from any institution that impedes direct action through bureaucratic or ‘civil’ inertia, no matter its progressive history.18 This is most of-
ten the point at which the statist criticism that anarchism is thus incapable of any sophisticated
organization is voiced, and that, as Robert Nozick asserts that a minimum state is a moral neces-
sity to protect freedoms against the risk of violence.19 However, this ignores both the historical
examples discussed above, and what could be considered ‘localized anarchism’ within current
hierarchical frameworks. The Cuban response to the 1990’s economic crisis, and the emergence
of organopónico collective farms operating parallel to state control and markets represents a so-
cialist example of direct community organization consistent with anarchist principles of solutions
from the ground up.20 Similarly, revitalized and community supported farming is a growing
17 Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York NY: Random House Inc, 1971), 24-26. 18 The Invisible Committee. 101-102. 19 Nozick. 52. 20 Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company Ltd, 2007), 70-74. 5
practice in both rural and urban America, particularly in economically devastated Detroit demon-
strates a localized shift in mentality towards both community and the purpose of production.21
This is due to the often unconscious internalization of the anarchist principle of organization for localized prosperity. Re-localization of both social and economic institutions brings them di- rectly under the jurisdiction of those both creating, and benefitting from their existence.22 This
internalization also addresses the spurious notion that anarchism is an amoral ideology due to its
lack of compulsive law.23 Kropotkin emphasized that the only adequate protection for morality
from both lawlessness and hierarchical despotism is the internalization of these functions within
the individual; but unlike the atomistic view of the self implied by other ideologies, the realiza-
tion of individual freedom engenders a “complete and profound responsibility”24 towards hu- manity.25 Thus the combination of radical refocusing of political power in the individual, and the
redefinition of political organization from the state to community, affords anarchism a far more
important place in the ideological pantheon than a ‘contender’ among its contemporary peers.
Anarchism represents a radical departure from the assumptions that underpin all other
ideologies currently adopted; which both explains its poor treatment in popular and academic ap-
praisals, and demands that it be considered as the basis for a fundamentally different type of ide-
ology. Much like democracy, or at least the ‘state’ as an entity that exists above and separate
from the constituents of a society, anarchism’s radical redefinition of both the individual and the
state are sufficient to necessitate it be evaluated as a paradigmatic ideology separate from those
21 ibid. 81-83. 22 Wigger and Buch-Hansen, 621, 623-624. 23 Nozick. 51-53. 24 Sartre. 33. 25 Kropotkin.196-197. 6
premised on a statist axiom. This paradigmatic view is also the only way to accommodate the va-
riety of manifestations of anarchism from socialist,26 to centrist or conservative.27 Attempts to
hybridize anarchism to ideologies such as traditional conservatism are invariably undone by the inability to reconcile the fundamental differences between the statist and stateless paradigms that underlie these separate ideologies.28 This is because anarchism as a basic set of principles re-
garding the individual and the organization of individuals with full determining power, can only
be partially reconciled with a hierarchical system or administration that curtails the basic free-
doms, and therefore responsibilities of the individual; and despite several examples above
demonstrating anarchistic organizational principles, they are none the less curtailed in their de- velopment by both external state constraints, and the internalization of these constraints on the
part of the individual. Thus while the ideological basis of anarchism and the anarchistic para- digm does indeed have substantial evidence to support its viability, the only conclusive test is a full application of stateless organization, of which we have yet to see beyond isolated historical examples.
It is not an exaggeration to say that anarchism is seen as the most dangerous form of
modern ideology, and that this is partly due to its ‘alien’ qualities in comparison to other ideolo-
gies. Its historical resilience and ability to adapt and flourish in the harshest environments, com-
bined with its seemingly naive trust in the individual as a political actor, and organic community
as an effective method of organization have been difficult to account for based on conventional
metrics for assessing ideologies. However, when these qualities are understood as a difference of
kind, rather than one of degree in fundamental principles relative to other ideologies, anarchism
26 Van der Walt. 351; Kropotkin. 56-57. 27 Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism (New York, NY: The New Press, 2013), 24-27; Adams and Jun. 245-247 28 Benjamin Franks, “Ideological Hybrids: The Contrary Case of Tory Anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies 21 no. 2, (2016): 173-175. 7
becomes a strange-yet-comprehensible beast. At it’s core, anarchism is a rejection of the assump- tion that humans must be checked by impersonal institutions to reach their personal and collec-
tive potential, and that regardless of the particulars of a given community or method, the individ-
ual truly empowered in their capacity towards freedom will not forsake their fellows. 8
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